Is FATCA the Worst Part of the Internal Revenue Code?

I’ve argued that subsidies for the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development are the most destructively wasteful outlays in the federal budget. At least on a per-dollar-spent basis.

But what if we did the same exercise on the tax side of the fiscal ledger. What’s the most damaging provision of the tax code?

In a TV interview earlier this year, I said I was most upset by all the corruption in Washington that is made possible by a Byzantine tax code. But that’s an overall observation, not a specific feature.

Today’s question deals with the part of the tax system is most harmful to the economy, on a per-dollar-collected basis.

If you asked me to make that choice five years ago, I probably would have picked the death tax, though I’ve had some experts tell me that “depreciation” is even worse.

But I think today we have a new champion (so to speak). A little-known law called the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act almost surely wins the prize. And it’s not just cranky libertarians such as myself that think the law is bad news.

The U.K.-based Economist is one of the most establishment publications in the world, yet even that magazine has concluded that the law “is doing more harm than good.”

Here are some excerpts from the article, starting with a basic description of the law.

Basil Zirinis of Sullivan & Cromwell, a law firm, began his presentation with a discussion of events in Iraq, where Islamist fighters were advancing on Baghdad. Barack Obama, he claimed, was drawing a red line around the city and, if necessary, would “drop FATCA on them”. …The analogy was tasteless, but also telling. FATCA stands for Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, an American law passed in 2010 to crack down on the use of offshore banks… It is feared and loathed by moneymen because of its complexity, its global reach and the high cost of compliance. One senior banker denounces it as “breathtakingly extraterritorial”. …FATCA turns foreign banks and other financial institutions into enforcement arms of America’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS). They must choose between turning over information on clients who are “US persons” or handing 30% of all payments they receive from America to Uncle Sam.

The law has a wide range of victims.

Financial institutions obviously are seriously impacted, and the damage isn’t limited to banks in places such as Switzerland.

The financial industry is struggling to work out which funds, trusts and other non-bank entities count as “financial institutions” under the law. There is also confusion over who is a “US person”. The definition is broad and includes not only citizens but current and former green-card holders and non-Americans with various personal and economic ties to the United States. Some Canadian “snowbirds” who travel to America for part of each year could be caught in the net, says Allison Christians, a tax professor at McGill University. As the complexities of implementation have grown apparent, the American authorities have had to extend several deadlines.

FATCA has already sent a chill through the 7m Americans who live abroad. Thousands have been told by their local banks and investment advisers that they no longer want their custom because it is too much hassle. Many others will now have to spend thousands of dollars to straighten out their paperwork with the IRS, even if they owe no tax (and most do not, since they will have paid a greater amount abroad, which counts as a credit against tax owed in America). A record 2,999 of these exasperated expats renounced their citizenship or green cards in 2013. More than 1,000 did so in the first quarter of 2014. (Before FATCA the number was a few hundred a year.)

The law is even victimizing organizations that don’t deserve the slightest hint of sympathy.

FATCA also places a burden on the IRS, by generating an unwieldy amount of information. The agency is being given far more to do with far fewer people (thanks to budget cuts), leaving it “on the verge of collapse”, according to a former senior official.

As an aside, don’t believe the nonsense about the IRS budget being inadequate.

Returning to our topic, one of the big problems is that FATCA was approved without even the tiniest shred of cost-benefit analysis.

The government, for all intents and purposes, is willing to impose immense damage on the private sector in hopes of collecting a tiny amount of tax revenue.

The law was passed without any formal cost-benefit analysis… However, the overall costs of complying, borne mostly by non-American banks, are likely to far exceed the extra tax receipts. FATCA is about “putting private-sector assets on a bonfire so that government can collect the ashes,” complains Richard Hay of Stikeman Elliott, a law firm. Mark Matthews, a former deputy commissioner of the IRS now with Caplin & Drysdale, another law firm, argues that the effort put into hunting offshore tax evaders is disproportionate.

And it’s worth pointing out the projected revenue from FATCA – about $870 million per year – is just a tiny fraction of the $100 billion that Obama was claiming on the campaign trail.

As more countries are pushed to share tax information systematically, the focus will turn to America’s willingness (or lack of it) to reciprocate. Latin Americans, for instance, are big users of banks in Florida, but America remains choosy about which governments it will share data with, and how much. It also has only limited information to give on the owners of shell companies because it does not collect their names itself. In some respects, America is less upright than the tax havens it deplores.

It would be very bad for our economy if we started sending confidential financial information to corrupt governments such as Mexico. Foreigners would pull their money out of American financial institutions and move it to other havens.

With all this background, you can understand why I was so critical of FATCA in this interview with a Chinese TV station.

P.S. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that Rand Paul is leading the fight against FATCA and other schemes to give governments more extra-territorial tax powers. As you can see, he’s even getting left-wing cartoonists upset.

Other lawmakers also now understand that the statist campaign against tax competition is bad news for America. Marco Rubio, for instance, deserves credit for trying to stop the Obama Administration from coercing American banks into obeying foreign tax law.

That’s why the long-run answer is tax reform. All pro-growth tax reform plans, such as the flat tax and national sales tax, get rid of double taxation and they’re also based on the common-sense principle of territorial taxation. With such systems, the government doesn’t need to know about your personal financial affairs, regardless of whether you have accounts in Geneva, Illinois, or Geneva, Switzerland.

[…] economy.Experts around the world have called FATCA “hare-brained,” “sheer idiocy,” the “worst part of the internal revenue code,” “an act of economic strangulation,” “heavy-handed, inequitable and hypocritical,” and […]

[…] and intrusive piece of legislation called the Foreign Account Taxation Compliance Act, or FATCA. This means any foreign financial institution must take all necessary steps to establish whether a […]

[…] topic is arcane yet important international tax issues, allow me to share an update on the horribly misguided FATCA law. As is so often the case, the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal is the source of great […]

[…] Subcommittee on Investigations (which used to be chaired by the clownish Sen. Levin, infamous for the FATCA disaster) has produced a very persuasive report on how bad U.S. tax policy is causing […]

[…] on individual taxpayers. But it’s even worse, because there are specific laws, such as the infamous Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, that impose absurdly high costs on Americans with cross-border economic activity, particularly […]

[…] on individual taxpayers. But it’s even worse, because there are specific laws, such as the infamous Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, that impose absurdly high costs on Americans with cross-border economic activity, particularly […]

[…] on individual taxpayers. But it’s even worse, because there are specific laws, such as the infamous Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, that impose absurdly high costs on Americans with cross-border economic activity, particularly […]

[…] P.S. Since today’s topic dealt with tax havens, that’s my excuse to share this interview with the folks at the Mises Institute. I wax poetic about why tax havens are a liberalizing force in the global economy, while also touching on issues such as double taxation, corporate inversions, financial privacy, and FATCA. […]

Where it concerns persons living outside of US borders and holding more than one nationality, it is time someone call the US and IRS bluff on FATCA. They have gotten people to believe things that are simply not true. Why? It is because of the way US citizenship is defined. It is right there in Amendment 14: Section 1 of the US Constitution: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Logic compels that both conditions of “born or naturalized in the United States” AND “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” must be true for this definition to be true.

Thus, a person living outside of US borders and not “subject to the jurisdiction thereof”, and who is not a resident or citizen of any state of the United States, is by definition, not necessarily a US citizen. It will depend on how a host country recognizes his citizenship. Citizenship, it turns out, is not absolute, and it is not defined by any one country. It is relative to various situations, jurisdictions and interpretations of law.

Thus, when a citizen of one country is abroad and no longer under the jurisdiction of that country, he may or may not continue to be a citizen of that country depending on how he is recognized and treated by the host country in which he is currently residing or visiting. This is the case for persons who hold sole Israeli citizenship, for example. If they should happen to find themselves in any one of the 31 or so countries that do not recognize Israel, they would be, effectively, stateless persons having no official citizenship. Thus, it is irrelevant how one might consider one’s citizenship, or how an institution like a bank might consider one’s citizenship, or even how the United States might consider one’s citizenship. The only definition of citizenship that matters is how a host country, under whose authority and jurisdiction one finds oneself, might consider one’s citizenship.

And this goes to the heart of the question on FATCA for persons of dual or more nationalities: Does a host country recognize one of its own citizens residing on its own soil as one of its own citizens? Or will it recognize one as a citizen of a foreign country such as the United States? If a country like France does recognize one as a French citizen, then it is not recognizing one as a foreign citizen. If, however, France recognizes one as a foreign citizen, then it is not recognizing one as a French citizen. In either case, important issues of constitutionality and national sovereignty arise, and these are what need to be resolved once and for all.

For one living outside of the US, whether one is a US Person or US citizen or not really depends on how a host country recognizes its citizens, residents and visitors, and not on how some foreign power like the US defines them. The question here is: Why should the US definition of citizenship or ‘personhood’ prevail and take precedence over the definitions of citizenship and ‘personhood’ of any of the hundreds of other countries throughout the world? This reveals the falseness of extra-territorial jurisdiction and the lie that underlies that doctrine.

fatca is a symptom of the real problem… stunning incompetence on the part of elected officials… bureaucrats… and policymakers… these folks lack the capacity to evaluate policy impact over the long term… anticipate consequences… and act in the best interests of the republic… the system is no longer working… we are on the highway to hell………………..

Is FATCA the Worst Part of the Internal Revenue Code?
No, because in fact and function it is not part of the IRC;
None of the three descriptive words apply.
By rights it ought to be an NSA program with the acronym
SCI for Spy on Creative Individuals; The State has a right
and a need to know how they are earning and spending
their money.

Why is this law enforceable? Why can’t the foreign banks tell the US government to get lost?

Good questions, and here is my explanation. Others might see it differently.

It is enforceable, and they won’t tell the USG to get lost for these two simple reasons…

Reason number One: USD reserve currency status combined with the 30% withholding sanction, means, if you want to conduct business in USD, you are forced into compliance, even if you DO NOT have ONE U.S. Person as an account holder.

Right now, in the international exchange game, the USA owns the only viable football. If you are to play, you have to use their ball. Ever since 9/11 there is a financial war happening that has been conducted by the U.S. Treasury. The most recent iteration is represented by this FATCA offshore jihad. Treasury is increasingly employing a “pay to play” strategy on access to US financial markets with using only ‘their’ USD football.

If you are NOT familiar with this, I would highly recommend this book by ex-Treasury official called “Treasury’s War: The Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare” by Juan Zarate

Coming back to FATCA….. All the FFIs of the world, (Foreign Financial Institutions – a very VERY broad definition) naturally want to avoid the sanction threat from Treasury for their U.S. investments or dollar exchanges that by the current international game design flow through New York.

Understandably, no one wants to be whacked by that 30%.

The FATCA Compliance Complex (FCC) composed of the Big 4 Accounting firms and legions of U.S. Tax Lawyers and CPAs (it is a gold mine in consulting fees) tells them they have to comply >544 pages of complex regulations, but hint at a “so called” easier route that Treasury has provided without statutory authority, I might add (see my earlier comment above). The FCC gladly market and co-enable the FATCA alternate solution.

In a brilliant strategy the FFIs are encouraged to lobby their governments to bail them out with an Inter-government agreement (called an IGA). This gets them off the hook for the 30% withholding sanction, and enlists their governments as collaborators with the USG as tax and financial data collectors for the International Revenue Service (IRS)

Of course all this data then becomes available to the alphabet soup of Homeland Security Departments….

If you like NSA spying, you will love FATCA, but nevermind.

…and the foreign government by default becomes a U.S. taxpayer as money is siphoned out of their economies and back to the USA.

Some governments, like New Zealand, are now using tax payer owned asset sales to help finance their Internal Revenue Department (IRD) pay for the cost of being the FATCA tax collector and enforcer for America.

They never seem to learn there is a real cost associated with being an IRS collaborator, but that 30% threat drove the response. It also moved the noncompliance cost risk from the FFI to the NZ Tax payer. But isn’t that how it always works in the bailout world these days?

Anyway, that is the number one reason for how the power extortion game works. That is why it is enforceable. The mafia has employed these techniques for years.

Reason number two: Hope for Reciprocity.

To help entice governments into cooperation, Treasury promised reciprocity carrot in the IGA, or at least to advocate for reciprocity. Right now, there will be nothing of significance as a REAL reciprocity trade for all the data the USA requires. Not to worry, Delaware and Nevada are still safe havens from any FATCA like transparency reciprocity efforts!

Yes, hypocritical, but….. the Obama Administration has a blowback surprise in the form of a Domestic version of FATCA (call it DATCA) planned for USFIs buried in their Fiscal Year Budget FY2015 on page 203. You can read it yourself here.

Congress probably ‘knowingly’ will NEVER approve this, but the way our democratic process works you can bury an unrelated amendment in some other bill and get it passed by stealth without public knowledge or debate.

That is how the Hire Act HR 2847 became the Trojan vehicle for “the worst law most Americans have never heard of”

…the US, i.e. The American People, are threatening to levy a perpetual 30% tax on all transactions the non-complying foreign entity routes through the US. And, unlike Ethiopia (more or less the only other country in the world whose people practice extraterritorial taxation and penalties) which other governments can just blow off, the US is too big of a market for any one company to avoid in all its direct and indirect transactions.

So good right? We’re ok! We have managed to lodge ourselves in an unavoidable gatekeeper role in the world and this situation can thus last forever, exploiting world businesses a little bit more so that we, Americans, already in the top ten percent of prosperity worldwide, can have a few extra goodies through the inefficient government apparatus.

Alas, not so. Going against fundamentals is a fools endeavor, one that distorts reality, masks the competitiveness signals (or un-competitiveness signals in this case) that might trigger true structural corrections, continues distortion in the wrong direction, and makes the eventual collapse all the more turbulent.

There is probably a term in economics about the reflexive practice of people (and thus electorates) to shoot the messenger and going against fundamentals with even more distorting band aids and gimmicks. But I would call it something like “Using up your momentum – in a brief flash of denial”. Americans are using the power accumulated in times when the US had a huge freedom margin advantage compared to the rest of the world, to distort fundamentals until the distortion reaches explosive proportions. The more Americans refuse to see they have lost the huge freedom margin advantage they once had compared to the rest of the world (because other nations mimicked America to various degrees, while Americans in many ways backtracked on their own founding “non-mainstream” freedoms) the more I think the American empire will come to an implosive end through a fast acting vicious cycle. But we are still in the beginning stages of this vicious cycle, so the slope of decline is not enough for people to notice, or to understand that it is structural, permanent, and only due to intensify further as the vicious cycle of [(a) coercive collectivism –> (b) demotivation and economic malaise –> (c) desperation –> (a) seeking salvage by forced recruitment into even more coercive collectivism] exerts the stranglehold that has choked most past empires.

This issue (extraterritorial taxation and the extortion of exit taxes to boot) plays a minor role so far, only affecting a small minority of expats at the margin, because the US continues to be prosperous, for now, though the seeds of its decline were sawn long ago and continue to be cultivated with increasing intensity by the very American People themselves. But the issue upsets me greatly, as you can probably tell, and is deeply troublesome and worrying. It attempts to close the ultimate safety valve to receiving the loss of competitiveness signals Americans need in order to stop their decline towards joining the rest of the world into an ever more dirigistic economy and coercive collectivism in general. The issue of extraterritorial taxation, and exit taxes to boot, will start figuring out bigger and bigger as US decline gets more underway, and the approach of closing the safety valves will be catastrophic, as desperation causes the American electorate to dig in its heels on the issue.

The law is enforceable because the penalty for non compliance is 30% withholding on all payments out of the US. So if funds invest in Treasuries or US companies then any sale comes with a 30% withholding. As the US represents over 50% of global investable assets, that’s a big penalty.

The IGAs were signed (the UK led the way and their guide is much more readable than the 530 odd pages of IRS regulations) to make compliance at least in theory practicable. The costs of building compliance run into the $ 10s of billions and annual costs will exceed likely revenues at least 10 fold – I’ve even made speeches to conferences along these lines!. For the amount spent malaria could have been eliminated AND clean water delivered throughout the Third World. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that you could deliver a pony to every little girl in the world for the cost. Non US governments have complained bitterly about the cost burdens and extra-territoriality, but nada from US politicians. The only silver lining is that US banks will have to comply with the reporting requirements mandated by the IGAs, and when they work out the cost and implications they will squeal to their representatives.

FATCA isn’t about stopping tax evasion or collecting revenue, as the numbers clearly show. It’s all about setting up the architecture to the ultimate goal of establishing a global tax as envisioned by Piketty and his fellow travelers.

I understand the concern of overseas Americans. But nothing in this world is perfect. So some will have to be inconvenienced a bit more, perhaps pay a little more. And we need a way to finance HopNChange in a sustainable, permanent way. As my evil brother Zorba puts it:” This is no time to let a small minority off the hook”. If this is what it takes to keep America prosperous, then be it. I declare it more or less fare, and so do a majority of my voting partners. Chuck Shumer does not get his power out of thin air. People, American People, VOTE for him.

For those Americans who want to avoid being taxed and tracked overseas the solution is simple. Renounce your citizenship, pay forty percent of your assets as a goodbye exit tax and then if, say, your parents get sick and you want to spend their last few years with them back in America, then you enter on a tourist visa, you are simply not allowed to work and you just stand in line at NSA every couple of months to prolong your tourist visa. I’m sure they will be sympathetic to your family situation and grant you extensions. Admittedly, perhaps not all aspects are entirely fair or easy. But financing all the HopNChange is just too important of a goal to obsess about accommodating everyone in the best possible way. In times past, we, the majority, just gave a proportion of the population rifles and sent them to the front with a forty percent chance of getting killed. By comparison, now we only ask for a modest forty percent exit tax so that we can finally transform our country under HopNChange.

Reblogged this on U.S. Persons Abroad – Members of a Unique Tax, Form and Penalty Club and commented:
Other lawmakers also now understand that the statist campaign against tax competition is bad news for America. Marco Rubio, for instance, deserves credit for trying to stop the Obama Administration from coercing American banks into obeying foreign tax law.

Policy makers should repeal FATCA, of course, but the real problem is that the tax code is biased against capital formation and also has a punitive policy of worldwide taxation.

That’s why the long-run answer is tax reform. All pro-growth tax reform plans, such as the flat tax and national sales tax, get rid of double taxation and they’re also based on the common-sense principle of territorial taxation. With such systems, the government doesn’t need to know about your personal financial affairs, regardless of whether you have accounts in Geneva, Illinois, or Geneva, Switzerland.

FATCA is the illegitimate spawn of America’s peculiar system of citizenship-based taxation, whose only other practitioner is the failed-state dictatorship of Eritrea in Africa – good company.

Distressingly, apologists for CBT treat it like some esoteric academic theory, the same way supposedly learned men, who should have known better, once opined about eugenics.

In fact, it’s really very simple: citizenship-based taxation is America’s own Apartheid system. CBT discriminates against a particular group of people on the basis of their place of birth – a characteristic as immutable as the colour of their skin. It labels them, tracks them, intimidates them, criminalizes them and forces them into virtual prisons from which escape is nearly impossible. Worse, the architects of CBT are now co-opting the rest of the world to implement this discriminatory regime for them. It is astonishing and disheartening how quickly and easily this is unfolding.

Far too many countries, cowed by the 30% withholding stick that the U.S. threatens to beat them with, like the FBAR and OVDP sticks they already beat their CBT victims with, simply refuse to challenge America on fundamental moral grounds and it is wrong.

The U.S. does not deserve a free pass on CBT and FATCA any more than the old South African government deserved a free pass for its heinous apartheid policies. Yet several ostensibly modern and enlightened nations have rationalized their acquiescence to FATCA by publicly exclaiming that America has the inherent right to tax its citizens in whatever manner it chooses. Well, in a just world it does not, for CBT represents a clear denial of basic human rights and dignity.

Yes, the global hypocrisy is staggering, especially from countries like Canada. Last year, our Conservative government expelled the consul-general for Eritrea for that regime’s tax extortion efforts against its expats in Canada. Two weeks ago, the same government enthusiastically ushered-in America’s FATCA laws to override our country’s own Charter of rights and freedoms, discriminating on the basis of national origin, gutting federal banking privacy laws and setting the stage for a massive legal challenge which will be fought in our Supreme Court.

Beneath all the technocratic language about forms, compliance, jurisdictions and enforcement, there is a fundamental truth: these American policies are morally unjust and the world must not condone them any longer. FATCA will be a global disaster unless it is stopped now.

It is indeed time for the world to say no to the U.S. practice of citizenship-based taxation and to force it to adopt residency-based taxation like the rest of the world. If not, then the world better find a more deserving reserve currency in a hurry – the United States has abused its position of trust for far too long and it needs to be reminded that it is just one nation in a community of nations. The breathtaking audacity of FATCA is simply a bridge too far.

No. Exit taxes are the worst part of the tax code. It is exit taxes that are most reminiscent of the extremes of totalitarian regimes. So totalitarian that most of them no longer exist. The fact that this type of totalitarianism in America is indirectly applied and supported through democratic means, is little consolation.

Second worst is the philosophy of extraterritorial taxation. FATCA is simply the less important mechanical detail through which the core extraterritorial taxation philosophy — supported by the American People — is enforced.

Morals of this type, such as FATCA, extraterritorial taxation, and exit taxes to boot, indicate that America’s freedom is more an act of serendipity — and the fortune of not having yet had enough centuries to screw things up (though most of latin America proved it can be done very quickly) — rather than a rational utilitarian support for liberty amongst its citizens. In that sense, the American trajectory and outlook is quite dire from this vantage point. So while America retains many freedoms, that is what worries me the most: The trajectory and the leading indicators as to where Americans are headed.

America is losing competitiveness as many of the seven billion people across the world are steepening their effort-reward curves by mimicking ever more of the founding American values, while America seems to be backtracking on them. The result is a tipping point that will unleash a death spiral whereby American standard of living precipitates into the world average.

Against this backdrop of impending decline, sealing the safety exits is a truly catastrophic approach that will delay Americans from receiving the loss of competitiveness signals, until the distortion has reached explosive (or should I say implosive) strength. Once American decline gets under way, these policies will figure in very big and will hasten the death spiral. People will reflexively rush to secure the exits even tighter, just like the depression prompted the American people to support tariffs and impediments to the free flow of goods and prosperity. Electorates always react in a suicidal way in these situations, triggering a death spiral.

As a flattening of the effort reward feeds a structural decline in America’s competitiveness, the American electorate will double down on the repressive approaches that caused the decline in the first place. As the structural malaise of low growth starts affecting the American citizenry the dominant cry will be: “This is no time to let an expatriate minority off the hook”. The vicious cycle will seal. The once American virtuous cycle of top prosperity turns into a vicious cycle of decline, the same cycle now consuming Europe’s prosperity on its trip towards world averagedom.

The number of American expatriates will swell, but by the time they become numerous enough to counterbalance domestic voters (who will be digging their heels in) and sway electoral results it will be too late. Way too late.

Daniel, you have a good platform, I read you a lot, but some gentle criticism here. It seems to me that you have NOT used it enough, to speak out against FATCA during its Rosemary’s baby gestion period with the OECD creating now a global GATCA as a result. Of course you are against it. Any thinking non partisan person is. I think I have seen everything you have written over the years, but in the run up, it seemed to me that you were just a little too silent.

Were you just assuming that it was a fait accompli and opposition or repeal efforts were wasted effort?

Maybe that is not fair, as frankly as John Oliver cleverly said, “if you want to do something really evil, hide it inside something boring,” and FATCA buried in stealth in the HIRE Act is definitely boring to most Americans if they every heard of it. So even I don’t bother to mention to the unsuspecting fools I meet overseas. Too boring and ears are too stuffed with Democratic partisan cotton.

Still now that July 1st (the anti Independence Day) has come and gone, and FATCA fratricide has begun, it would have been nice to have seen more effort against FATCA in the 4 years that Treasury has been making a hideously complex and expensive mess of it.

That said, this post is welcome.

Just to add to your knowledge base, this recent post by Allison Christians from Canada is worthy of your consideration..

IRS claims statutory authority for FATCA agreements where no such authority exists!

This is in response to a ridiculous letter from Treasury to Congressman Posey siting statutory authority for creating FATCA IGA pseudo treaties with other countries around the world. Have to hand it to the FATCAnatics, they were very clever in duping even the Chinese to sign onto them.

I don’t think much of Congressman Boehner and his threatened lawsuits against Obama for over use of Executive power (where was he when Bush was doing it?). It is seen as too crassly political. Still …these arguments by Christians would be a good addition to the effort if he goes that route.